She was only 18 when she ascended the throne in 1837, two years before the announced invention of the medium by Louis Daguerre in Paris and William Henry Fox Talbot in London. Painters fulfilled the role of commemorating her marriage in 1840 to her first cousin Prince Albert. Thereafter, the rituals of their public and private lives were more often witnessed by a camera, whether she liked it or not.

"A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria and Photography" at the Getty Center brings together a complex array of more than 100 artworks and artifacts from her 63-year reign. Guest curator
Anne M. Lyden
has merged rare items from the Royal Collections with material from the National Media Museum in Bradford, England, along with the Getty's own substantial holdings.

Many of the early British masters are represented on the walls and in the vitrines. Salted paper prints by Talbot mingle in the first room with daguerreotypes by Antoine Claudet and William Edward Kilburn. Another room has a sample of portraits by Julia Margaret Cameron and Oscar Rejlander, two of Victoria's favorite photographers in her later years.

A Royal Passion: Queen Victoria And Photography

The Getty Center

Through June 8

The more than 20 splendid works by Roger Fenton are reason enough to attend the show. His hand-colored portraits of Victoria and Albert from 1854 display the young couple's overt affection for one another, feelings not usually revealed by royalty to outsiders. Fenton's exterior views of the four royal residences—Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, Osborne House and Balmoral Castle—exhibit the unusual trust he enjoyed from his patrons.

Less compelling to behold but no less intriguing for their historical value are the many cartes de visites—the first truly mass-produced photographs. An 1860 set of portraits of the royal family sold in the millions to an eager public and made their photographer, John Jabez Edwin Mayall, a wealthy man from the sales.

These various kinds of pictures help to build a composite of what might be called the first modern monarchy. Victoria and Albert kept up with the latest updates in the technology of image-making during the industrial era. They used photography to record family gatherings, to project authority with a new vehicle of mass communication and to answer the needs of a world-wide empire whose subjects were curious to see, or own, a likeness of their sovereign.

The royal couple were early collectors and promoters of photography. Or perhaps it's more accurate to say that Albert was. Picture machines spoke to his ardent belief in science and gadgets as spurs to human progress. In 1842 he sat for a daguerreotypist and even bought images of antigovernment Chartist demonstrations, among the earliest crowd scenes captured by a camera. (Two faint examples can be seen in the first room here.)

In the 1850s Albert encouraged Dr. Ernst Becker, a German tutor in the household, to learn to take pictures. (Neither Albert nor Victoria ever became a photographer.) An example of Becker's work from 1854 at Osborne House has the royal family lined up in front of a fountain, about as casual as this group permitted itself to be in a photograph.

Victoria matched her husband's enthusiasm as best she could. (She was busy in the 1840s and '50s being pregnant with and giving birth to their nine children.) When the Photographic Society of London staged its first exhibition in 1854, the royal couple gave their blessing with a visit and were escorted through the galleries by Fenton.

But the queen's reaction to a group portrait with five of her brood, seen in the first room here, suggests she harbored misgivings about the careless sincerity of the new medium. She was so displeased that the lens had accurately revealed her unguarded expression—it caught her with eyes closed—that she scratched her face out on the daguerreotype plate, the predigital way of hitting delete. "Mine was unfortunately horrid," she said of the likeness, "but the children's were pretty," she allowed.

The exhibition is a reminder that personages, then and now, spend an inordinate amount of time posing for the camera. In Victoria's time, from the evidence here, the royal children were no less bound by this stricture. Viewers may yearn, in vain, for a glimpse of happy spontaneity or twitches of action.

After Albert's death, in 1861, Victoria withdrew from public view for several years. When she allowed a photograph of herself to be released for public consumption, she often made sure that it included a memorial tribute to her late husband. An 1862 group portrait by William Bambridge, of the queen with three of her children, has her gazing down at a photograph of Albert in her lap beside a white marble bust of him garlanded with flowers. (The rising number of photographs within photographs is one of the fascinating trails to follow in the installation.)

There is a wall here of state portraits made after 1876, when she took the title Empress of India. They reinforce the image of the queen as she is most frequently recalled today, that of a stern and doughy-armed woman, weighed down by grief, heavy garments and the burden of her inherited office.

A less official and more personal side of Victoria can be seen in a bracelet, circa 1888, that she is said to have worn constantly in her waning years. Made up of tiny peach-tinted photographs of 13 of her grandchildren inside gold ovals, it is only a selection of her progeny. Before her death, she would have needed armfuls of jewelry to picture all 42 of her living and dead grandchildren.

She lived long enough to have her Diamond Jubilee in 1897 recorded by cinematographers. A 38-second clip here features a long parade of horse-drawn carriages with Victoria at the end, hidden from the camera's prying eye under a white parasol. "The Queen, God Bless Her!" reads the title card in this silent film.

For reasons unclear, Ms. Lyden has not included in the show any material from Victoria's funeral in 1901, an even more lavish media spectacle. Only in the catalog can one study the deathbed photograph. Taken by an unknown artist, it renders her swathed in white, surrounded by lilies, with a crucifix and a portrait of Albert hanging from the headboard.

The message of this laborious composition, that her deceased husband remained the focus of her life, would no doubt have pleased her. The low camera angle, though, accentuates her arched nose and wide nostrils and might have prompted another act of censorship. As she knew from experience, photography can by honest accident undermine the noblest of intentions.

She was so displeased that the lens had accurately revealed her unguarded expression—it caught her with eyes closed—that she scratched her face out on the daguerreotype plate, the predigital way of hitting delete. "Mine was unfortunately horrid," she said

Photographs at that time were brutally honest, conversely portrait painters were adept at downplaying physical imperfections and exaggerating positive features (this was before photo shop and airbrushing). Take a look at the portrait of Henry the VIII for an example of painting "exaggeration".

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.